Can Zabbix 4.0 windows agent work with 3.4 server?

[zaicnupagadi]

Hey,

I write a PowerShell functions to align all zabbix agents on servers, and thought about upgrading them to 4.0 already before upgrading the actual zabbix server.

However when installing 4.0 server I am able to get values locally on the host, but when reaching from zabbix server with zabbix_get -s host -k key I am gettign info that "Check access restrictions in Zabbix agent configuration". I have ubinstalled old version, installed new version (using --uninstall/--install - not just copying the *.exe files as you might think)

Is it normal that zabbix agent 4.0 will not work with zabbix server 3.4 or I forget to do something here (but really doubt)?

Cheers,
J

[Atsushi]

If you can not get the value from the Zabbix server, please check the setting of Server in zabbix_agentd.conf.
Is the value the IP address of the Zabbix server?

If you can not acquire by all means, please increase the debug level of the Zabbix agent and check what kind of log will be output when trying to get the value from the Zabbix server.

I do not recommend combining Zabbix 4.0 agent with Zabbix 3.4 server.

[ingus.vilnis]

4.0 agent will not work with older server or get if you use passive checks (which you apparently do). There was a change in 4.0 and discussions in the forum about this already, please do a quick search.

If you use active agent checks then it will work fine. If you can't use active mode then only downgrade agent to 3.4 or upgrade server to 4.0 will help.

[zaicnupagadi]

4.0 agent will not work with older server or get if you use passive checks (which you apparently do). There was a change in 4.0 and discussions in the forum about this already, please do a quick search.

If you use active agent checks then it will work fine. If you can't use active mode then only downgrade agent to 3.4 or upgrade server to 4.0 will help.

Thanks Ingus! I got rid of this idea of upgrading clients prior to server.

[Dan18]

4.0 agent will not work with older server or get if you use passive checks (which you apparently do). There was a change in 4.0 and discussions in the forum about this already, please do a quick search.

If you use active agent checks then it will work fine. If you can't use active mode then only downgrade agent to 3.4 or upgrade server to 4.0 will help.

Is there somewhere a compatibility matrix of the windows zabbix agent?
In our old Zabbix 2.2 Server environment, we have several versions of windows agent up to 3.4 working in passive mode successfully over years.
Now we have zabbix 4.0 in a parallel installation and want to move over the clients to the new server. Would be great if we just have to exchange the config file.

Unfortunately, the windows agent 4.0 stops once every day. We have not yet figured out why the windows zabbix agent stops. there is noting in the logfile..
Dan

[ingus.vilnis]

Dan, there is no such compatibility matrix yet.

Prior to 4.0 the newer agents could be used with older servers but 4.0 introduced the headers to be mandatory thus agent no longer accepts passive requests from older servers.

Agent stopping every day seems to be something environment specific as no other problems of that kind have been observed elsewhere.

How come there is nothing in the log file? Is the service stopped without any lines in the log? Then apparently something is killing it.

[Dan18]

A compatibility matrix would IMHO help. Especially when upgrading the zabbix server. In our case from 2.2 LTS to 4.0 LTS.

Based on your remark, I conclude:
There is no way to run zabbix server 2.2 and zabbix server 4.0 in parallel while having the agents (version 2.2.x or 3.0.x) talking to both servers. Correct?
Zabbix agents version 4.x only successfully talk to zabbix server 4.x. Did I get that right?



About the zabbix agent 4.0 on Windows 10. There is no more information in the logfile, even on the highest Debug level. Just a line like
"Zabbix Agent stopped. Zabbix 4.0.0 (revision 85308)."
Nothing at all in the Windows eventlog.

Win10 1709 (Build 16299.847) --> Zabbix Agent stops about once every day
Win10 1803 (Build 17134.523) --> Zabbix Agent runs smoothly, no stops

My workaround is to automatically restart the service on error.

The only "special" entry in the zabbix_agentd.conf is this one here:
HostnameItem=system.run[powershell -NonInteractive -Command "$h=hostname; $d=(wmic computersystem get Domain | findstr /RVB 'Domain ^$'); $h.ToLower() + '.' + $d"]

That works fine. The above is basically the same as
echo %COMPUTERNAME%.%USERDNSDOMAIN%
.. but we wanted it in small letters.

(ah, and yes, "$env:computername.ToLower() + '.' + $env:userdnsdomain.ToLower()" would be faster.. just figured this out)

Dan

[ingus.vilnis]

There is no way to run zabbix server 2.2 and zabbix server 4.0 in parallel while having the agents (version 2.2.x or 3.0.x) talking to both servers. Correct?
Zabbix agents version 4.x only successfully talk to zabbix server 4.x. Did I get that right?

Correct, if you use items with type "Zabbix agent" (so called passive checks). They will not work.
Still older agents (prior to 4.0) work well with 4.0.x server if the item type is "Zabbix agent (active)".

Regarding the Windows agent restarts I got no comments, sorry. You may try to submit a bug report to developers.

[zaicnupagadi]

Thanks guys!